Survivors feel abandoned at dark heart of Nepal quake

Desperate survivors living at ground zero of Nepal's earthquake felt abandoned to their fate Friday after losing their loved ones and livelihoods in a disaster that has claimed more than 6,300 lives.

01.05.2015

(AFP) Desperate survivors living at ground zero of Nepal's
earthquake felt abandoned to their fate Friday after losing their loved
ones and livelihoods in a disaster that has claimed more than 6,300
lives.

While the joyous rescue of two survivors reinvigorated the
search for further signs of life in the ruins of Kathmandu, the Red
Cross warned of "total devastation" in far-flung areas of the poor
Himalayan nation.

Six days on from the 7.8-magnitude quake, authorities put the number of dead in Nepal at 6,204 while around 100 more were killed in neighbouring India and China.

But the full extent of the destruction wrought by Nepal's deadliest earthquake in more than 80 years was still emerging as relief workers struggled to reach mountainous districts.

The destruction appeared particularly dire in the
Sindhupalchowk region, northeast of Kathmandu, where the sense of
desperation was mounting.

"One of our teams that returned from Chautara in
Sindhupalchowk district reported that 90 percent of the homes are
destroyed," said Jagan Chapagain, Asia head of the International
Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.

"The hospital has collapsed, and people are digging through
the rubble with their hands in the hope that they might find family
members who are still alive."

Utter devastation

AFP journalists in another part of Sindhupalchowk saw utter devastation.

"Almost every house in my village is destroyed, and 20
people died. We lost our cattle and our sheep," said Kumar Ghorasainee,
amid the ruins of his hometown of Melamchi.

The 33-year-old English teacher said the school had collapsed and there was nowhere for the children to go.

"No one has come to help us -- the cars and the aid trucks just drive by ... How will we manage now?"

In Melamchi, shops and restaurants were closed and streets were mainly deserted.

In nearby rice-farming communities, almost all the houses
had been so severely damaged that they were no longer habitable, and
locals were sleeping in makeshift tents.

Although relief organisers say the operation to reach rural areas is intensifying, people in Melamchi had received nothing.

"We see the helicopters, we see the planes, but no one stops here," said Shalik Ram Ghorasainee.

The 23-year-old farmer said he had heard about foreign rescuers who have been fanning out across the country.

"We read the news about foreign aid ... and we are hopeful.
But in reality no one comes here, we are completely unknown," he added.

Ghorasainee described how one Japanese aid team driving
past his village had spotted a local man collapsed by the side of the
road. They stopped to give him two painkillers, and then drove on, he
said.

Whoops of joy

Rescuers from more than 20 countries have been searching for survivors, working alongside Nepalese emergency teams.

French, Norwegian and Israeli rescuers took part in a
successful operation to extract a woman late Thursday from the ruins of a
building in Kathmandu, close to where a 15-year-old had been earlier
pulled to safety.

After spending 10 hours trying to free Krishna Devi Khadka,
the rescuers greeted her emergence from the rubble with whoops of joy. A
doctor told AFP on Friday that she remains in intensive care.

The earlier rescue of 15-year-old Pemba Tamang, who told
AFP that he stayed alive by eating a jar of ghee (clarified butter), was
hailed as a miracle by medics who said he had suffered only cuts and
bruises.

The rescues offered a rare respite from the grim reports mounting elsewhere.

Locals in Gorkha district said their misery was being compounded by terrifying aftershocks that were still being felt.

"The ground still shakes a little every day. We don't know
when we are alive, when we are dead," Gopal Gurung told AFP in the
village of Laprak as an Indian helicopter delivered supplies.

"We are not protected, it is raining all the time, (we
don't) know what can happen. Scared, people scared now," he said in
broken English.

Aid appeal

The UN's food agency appealed for $8 million to help
farmers and avert a crisis in the food supply ahead of the rice planting
season which should begin in late May.

"There is a critical window of opportunity to help crop
producers plant in time to have a rice harvest this year," said Somsak
Pipoppinyo, the Food and Agricultural Organisation's representative in Nepal.

Nepal's government, which admits to being overwhelmed by the disaster, hoped more relief supplies could be delivered by air.